


A Song Calls Them Home

by Azzandra



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Female Protagonist, Gen, Humor, Post-Corporatist Mid-topia, Space Anomalies for Fun and Profit, Space Opera, Space Stations, Weird Fantasy Bullshit in Space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29270475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: Debbie has led a completely uninteresting life as part of a space station maintenance crew, and the day her life takes a turn for the interesting is also the day she leaves. She doesn't know what this sound in her head is, but it's not leaving her alone until she figures out the source. Kind of like trying to figure out which appliance is making that annoying buzz, except the buzz itself is sentient.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	1. Prologue: In Which the Protagonist Does Not Appear

_The thing_ that lurched through the 48 Doris Space Station spaceport terminal on that quiet day somehow managed to avoid being captured on any of the security feeds. Anyone inspecting the footage would have, no doubt, seen glimpses of _the thing_ ; a strange protuberance jutting into frame in a corner, a shuffle of feet obscured by shadow, some inexplicable flashes of motion of which only one or two blurry frames would be captured. 

Mostly they would see static and distortions, though not to any extreme degree, and strange flickers that would make the footage loop. 48 Doris had never seen need to invest all that heavily in security. Its population, as a 'manufacturing station', consisted mostly of burly manual laborers who insisted they wanted no trouble. Any visitors or passers-through would take one look at the median height and weight of the primarily heavy-grav laborers, and conclude that they wanted no trouble either.

It was on an off day, just after the last public transport of the week had left, and two days out from the next one, meaning that only private spaceships would be departing from the spaceport that day. The number of private spaceships departing from any given station being proportionate to its size and overall traffic, that meant nothing was scheduled for the day. The terminal was as empty as a can of chips on a long-haul freighter running over schedule.

But stuck at the terminal that day, just like the last crumbs of potato chips at the bottom of the can, was the snack store attendant and her pile of homework.

And maybe that could have been a fruitful day of study and soul-crushing boredom for her, except _the thing_ that lurched through the 48 Doris Space Station spaceport terminal that day also lurched its way straight into the snack store.

The bell over the door made its requisite beeps of warning, and the attendant looked up--

\--and then very, very slowly, because instinct told her that was the wise course of action, she sank down behind the counter, crouching until all that was visible of her were her wide eyes peering over the edge of the counter. Because the other instinct, the one that was more fight than flight, also told her it would be a very bad idea to take her eyes off _the thing_.

_The thing_ looked around the store (probably, she assumed) based on the motion of what was (likely, though not to make any assumptions) its head. Perhaps it was more a helmet, though a strangely organic shape for it, or maybe it was a chitinous exoskeleton, though, if that was true, what a terribly metallic sheen for one. The jutting, inexplicable spikes and dips in the thing's shape added up to something-- if not vaguely humanoid, then at least bipedal. The color, at certain angles, could be described as iridescent for how it changed in the light, though maybe some mad purple from beyond the stars was a more adequate description. Certainly there was a horror writer somewhere on the spacenet uploading fervid stories which described exactly this very hallucinatory creature now standing next to the Kuiper-Cola neon display. 

It was eerily quiet in the shop, as though the very presence of _the thing_ was putting a damper on reality. Even the usually flickering 'K' of the Kuiper-Cola sign now shone with admirable consistency, as though afraid to attract attention. When _the thing_ lurched along again, passing the soda machine and shuffling past the rack of disposable flexi-screen magazines, it stopped next to the counter, and hunched in as though studying the shelves of discounted junk food behind the counter.

The shopgirl was frozen in place, having gone too long working in the snack shop to not recognize the general shape a customer browsing. She was not certain if offering to help would make the experience better or worse, except she was starting to develop the irrational fear that if she ever attempted a retail smile on this creature, her teeth would spontaneously fall out in fear.

_The thing_ extended an appendage next, and the horrified shopgirl had a moment of thinking this was how she would lose her head, except that as the limb snapped to its full length like some kind of telescopic tool being unfolded, she followed its tip to the indicated orange package of artificially reconfigured peanuts on the rack just behind her.

With very careful motions, she shuffled back on her haunches, reached for one of the packages, and then threw it up on the counter like she was slapping down a dead rat. She sorely hoped she was not misinterpreting the situation here, though if she was, that meant she was being unaccountably rude to a customer at a time when she couldn't even enjoy it.

_The thing_ now used its forelimb to gingerly drag the package closer towards it. Another limb emerged from--somewhere, best not think where--and after fiddling with the package for a bit, the way someone might if they weren't sure how to open it properly, the plastic was slashed open sufficiently for one of the very fake peanuts to be extracted, and then brought up to its... presumably, mouth.

Then _the thing_ made to move again, turning its entire abominable body towards the door.

"Um."

It stopped, everything quiet once again, save for the grossly wet sound of chewing.

"That'll be 1.59," the shopgirl said, and raised a hand to point to the green square marking a spot on the surface of the counter. "Credit chit scanned here."

The sound of chewing stopped for a moment. The shopgirl held her breath.

And then a limb was once again extended, slowly, agonizingly slow, unfolding like a flower in stop-motion into more bladed sharp stabby bits than the pack of artificial peanuts had warranted.

Most people had their chits on their wrist, either subcutaneous or on a wristband. The shopgirl had to conclude the limb in question was a wrist, then, because the green square beeped cheerfully as _something_ was scanned, and the words 'Transaction successful' flashed on the merchant's screen just below the counter.

A second beep followed, of the bell above the door, and just like that, the snack store was empty.

The 'K' in the Kuiper-Cola sign began flickering again. 

The shopgirl let out a long breath, and decided to spend some quality time with the fetal position.


	2. Death and Sales Taxes

Anyone who spent any amount of time on 45 Eugenia Space Station quickly grew inured to its brand of early expansion era kitsch. The neon flash of the shop signs overlapped with the metallic grays of the station's architecture, and where the class lines had once been drawn, there was still a very ugly, abrupt transition between functional brutalism and art deco frippery.

All of which was largely inconsequential to Debbie Welkin. On the lower level where she grew up, 'decor' meant the gaudy, outdated KuiperCo. ads that were still plastered at every bend. Before she was old enough to tell letters and numbers apart, and before she know her address in the habitation section, her parents would instruct her that she was allowed to go as far as the poster of the lady in the red spacesuit down one direction of the hallway, and only as far as the ad for gum down the other side.

Now she was old enough to go where she wanted, and still her job in maintenance seemed to delineate the limits of her existence: as far down as the docking bay in one direction, as far up as the Ratskeller up the other way. If, by coincidence, these were also the areas of the station where her muddy green jumpsuit wouldn't draw undue scrutiny, that was not because Debbie felt intimidated by the up-top crowds. They had janitors in the areas meant for tourists and travelers, too. And poppa Welkin didn't raise a coward.

But the posters, those were a constant. More so than the tiny color-coded plaques marking corridors and sections, Debbie oriented herself by the cheerful, saccharine posters still mounted to the walls.

She passed one just then, a splash of green and yellow arranged in the abstract representation of a spiral galaxy, with the tagline 'KuiperCo - Everywhere you go!'

That was the first joke that station children learned. Cheery affect, wide smile: KuiperCo! Then pulling a face, in a deep, ominous voice: Everywhere you go! And if they did it right, all the other children would laugh. 

Down the hall, first turn to the left, another poster. The tagline declared: 'Opportunity around every corner!' 

Debbie took that one to heart, and turned the corner to walk into the one hallway on the station that always seemed eerily clean despite none of the maintenance staff ever so much as sending an automated scrubber down that way. As far as Debbie knew, they stopped because the scrubbers kept inexplicably breaking down, and on some obscure task management spreadsheet, this hallway was marked Clean By Personnel instead of Clean by Automation. It was the lot she'd drawn as a rookie, and even after she had enough seniority to foist the task on some other newbie in line for hazing, she still kept this task.

It was how she managed to squeeze an hour-long break every few days without raising any suspicions. Oh, certainly the state of the hallway was logged, but everyone seemed to assume Debbie was the one responsible for its perpetual state of cleanliness. And not for nothing, but Debbie did in fact think she did good work when there was work to be done.

It was only that she was not the one doing this one.

And in fact, that information might have remained a mystery, except for the one time she was eating a particularly crumbly protein bar, and one of the panels on the walls popped open just so Debbie could be cussed out at great length and in considerable detail for her slovenly behavior.

Now, Debbie glanced around one more time for safety, and then tapped her knuckles against the same wall panel in a pre-established rhythm.

The panel slid outward, but only a crack. Two glinting yellow eyes peered out from the darkness, narrowed in suspicion.

"You got the goods?" the voice asked from inside.

"You want this candy bar, or not?" Debbie asked, waving the Juno! chocolate bar so it could be seen, but not close enough to the opening so it could be snatched away.

A snort came from inside the wall.

"They were all out of Ganymede at the vending machine," Debbie replied sarcastically, because they both knew full well that Ganymede was the kind of chocolate that didn't come from vending machines. Possibly it came on golden platters, if you could afford it.

But, hell, what was wrong with a good old Juno! bar? Debbie had never complained whenever her dad came home with what was objectively the cheapest option you could pick from any candy dispenser and still claim to love your child. Milosh from next door only ever got Starpoppers growing up. Starpoppers sucked.

"Come on, Feathers, I don't have all day," Debbie taunted, waving the chocolate bar closer.

"Fine," Featherjones huffed in response. A limb shot out--decidedly unfeathery, though moving too fast to make out much detail--and the Juno! was snatched from Debbie's hands. "If you saved up your credits, maybe you could afford a bag of Mutineers one of these days."

"Dream on," Debbie said, not because she couldn't muster the self-restraint to save up her bonus credits for a bag of Mutineers, but because the bag she did manage to buy for herself each week was stowed safely in her room, and rationed out as desert each evening to last until the next time her bonus added up. They were ridiculously delicious, and that was one thing both she and the damn wall-goblin could agree on. But hell if she was going to waste a single one of the scrumptious pralines on Featherjones.

Now that her errand was done, Debbie slid down to the floor, legs crossed as she leaned against the wall, and took out her pad. It was old, and the handles stuck a bit, but when she unscrolled it open, the screen lit up with the last thing she'd been looking at: the station itinerary for the next week.

"We've got tourists on the way to the Regatta," Debbie said. 

She said the last word in a sing-song, but even to her own ear, she wasn't sure if she'd meant it with contempt or awe. She didn't understand enough about spaceships to know if racing them was pointless or not. The Regatta happened every six years, and that was just enough time to forget any trivia about the event by the time it came around again.

For Featherjones, however, the real treat would be the higher foot traffic through the station. Snacks and little shiny things got so terribly easier to misplace, the larger the crowds got. He could get quite brazen, but he'd never been caught. 

Hell, Debbie had been sharing breaks with him for three years, and even she didn't know what he looked like. The occasional glimpse of his limbs or silhouette had not given her a precise idea of what he really was. She hoped he wasn't anything dangerous, because if he turned out to be a brain-eating alien or something, then giving him candy for years on end was probably a pretty big oopsie on her part.

Though, if he decided to eat the brains of some of the people going to the Regatta, Debbie wasn't going to shed any tears. Slim pickings, anyway. 

The news report said that the Regatta was being held in the Adeona System.

Debbie didn't know where that was, but she liked the sound of it. She liked the sound of any place that didn't start with a number.

* * *

When humanity spread to the stars, before there was any colony, before there was any terraformed planet, there were the KuiperCo. Space Station Series, offering jobs for room and board, all for the grand adventure of space travel. Sure, there were colonists and explorers constantly on the move, but that meant they needed waystations to get them where they were going, right? And those waystations needed workers, every bit as adventurous as the intrepid set.

Not that the people who accepted the jobs did much traveling once they were assigned a station. Each station was its own sort of company town, and between the back-breaking labor, and the fact that monetary compensation came in the form of credits that could only be spent on the station they were earned, the only thing that found itself skyrocketing for a while was labor abuse.

Until the Union Wars, at least. Labor disputes extended for decades, and reached repeated peaks of violence as KuiperCo. tried to suppress any worker who got into their heads such far-fetched ideas as 'maybe our shifts shouldn't be 36 hours long' or 'maybe if we had safer equipment our mortality rate on the job wouldn't be 56%'. Not that KuiperCo. didn't know how dangerous its space stations were--a notorious leaked memo had one of their own CEOs calling them 'the meatgrinders'--but the company took violent exception to the notion that they should spend a single cent of their profits on improving the working conditions and maybe not killing as many of their employees. They had calculated the cost of a human life down to the toenail, and with the population boom going on at the time, as the leaked memo also stated, 'meat is cheap'.

But that was history book stuff, and Debbie hadn't really considered much of it interesting, except the bit at the end, with the extra-judicial execution of KuiperCo.'s CEO by an anonymous employee of the company, because that was the part where guy who'd called the stations 'meatgrinders' was summarily executed. She thought that bit was funny.

These days, KuiperCo. was not even that relevant anymore. After the rise of the pangalactic workers' unions, and the way the strikes and protests hit them, by the end of the prolonged conflict, the company had tallied its losses, inventoried its assets, and realized that as a result of investing heavily into military equipment and personnel, they were better armed and better trained than any standing army. Assaulting and murdering union strikers had apparently been ninety percent of their business model by that point anyway, and nobody could even buy a can of Kuiper-Cola anymore without tasting the blood that went into forcing workers to produce the stuff in sub-par conditions.

So they divested many of their former food and drink divisions. Kuiper-Cola would live on as produced by Perenna Inc, who chose to keep the name and completely change the recipe. And KuiperCo. then consolidated their military contracts, and nowadays they were mostly doing mercenary work. Apparently, that paid a lot better than shilling sugar water. 

The stations remained, mostly. Under the poor upkeep of KuiperCo., they'd become little better than space trash, and it wasn't even worth the company's time to use their extensive military prowess to reclaim them from the labor unions. The former employees, newly redundant--not that they'd seen a paycheck in a while--now found themselves having no place to go but the stations. It wasn't as though KuiperCo. was going to recommend them for any other job, such as in the newly-sprouted colonies, or in the various armada-nations that had sprung up since the first expansion era.

All that remained was to repair the stations and try to make a living independently. A notion KuiperCo. scoffed at, convinced that without them, all the former workers would find only failure and disaster. 

Well, seventy years down the line, space stations still had the highest live expectancy of all urban human settlements, so as it turned out, the only thing that had ever stood between them and prosperity this entire time had been KuiperCo. itself. There was some kind of lesson in there for anyone who took a long view of history, but Debbie certainly didn't and, strictly speaking, neither did KuiperCo.

* * *

Debbie's life was this: it was a shift in maintenance, consisting mostly of calibrating auto-scrubbers and manually cleaning anything they'd missed. 

It was evenings spent at the Ratskeller, the one station establishment where everyone from Maintenance went to eat and drink, so she could make a showing of being friendly despite not being friends with any of her co-workers.

It was late evenings staring into her pad, watching movies and shows, reading news summaries without reading the articles they were summarizing. 

It was waking up in the morning and opening her pad so she could claim her bonus credits, and then plan what she was going to spend them on, and then always conclude it would be on a bag of Mutineers.

It was the itch, itch, itching at the back of her mind, the nagging feeling that she was meant to be doing something in particular, but she couldn't remember what. She'd cobbled together a life of unimportant tasks, of inconsequential decisions, thinking that perhaps if nothing she did was that significant, the feeling that there was something important she had to do would go away.

But it didn't. So she downloaded books she couldn't muster the attention span to read, and she picked up hobbies that she abandoned just as easily again, and she feigned interest in things her co-workers gushed about, but none of that really helped.

Maybe this was a serious medical condition, and she would visit her assigned station physician and discover that the thing itching at her brain had been a tumor all along. She had a vivid mental image of it, her doctor tapping a brain scan going 'yep, it's a big one', indicating some giant dark spot on the scan like a black hole which had been eating up her attention this entire time. 'If only you'd come sooner,' the imaginary doctor would say, shaking their head sadly. 'Too late to do anything about it now.'

But no.

What Debbie did, when the itching got too bad, and her thoughts scattered like dust on the solar winds, was go to the dockside observation window, and stare at the traffic going in and out of the station.

The security net that surrounded them was a comforting presence for the station. It was only really visible when one of the ships passed through it, and then it would shimmer golden around the ship's hull, like cheerful motes frothing along the metal. 

If a ship tried to pass without being granted access beforehand, of course the lightshow turned out a bit differently. Debbie had only seen it once, a starship being lit up from the inside as though by yellow lightning, and then torn apart in a fireless explosion. She still did not know if they'd been pirates, or if the station's Traffic Control had messed up and given the ship the incorrect frequency for passing through the net, but it had been a gruesome spectacle, and she had managed to pull a double shift in maintenance helping to clean that mess up. The extra pay had kept her in candy for quite a while.

But the security net was what kept 45 Eugenia Space Station safe, and even with intermittent mishaps, there wasn't a single person on the station who wasn't grateful for its presence.

Until the day when the security net came down, and the itch at the back of Debbie's head exploded into a shrill note that subsumed all her senses.


End file.
